Needs

At 2 o clock in the morning I am up with G for the fourth time with an ear ache. There is nothing more I can do for his pain, except heat compresses. 

In reading Listen Love Repeat, this is an interruption. An interruption to my beloved sleep. In this moment right now, how do I treat this moment holy. How does a sleep deprived for 13 years momma of 7 boys treat this horrible moment, like a holy moment?

If you are with me in my home, you would quickly find out, interruptions are the most annoying part of my day. Why do they have to come talking me me in three different directions with three different problems that I can't solve because I can't think! They interrupt my thoughts, each other, mine and Mr. conversations. They interrupt my life. Which is constant care of them anyway. So really they sabatoge themselves. 

But that is a whole other topic.  Right now, with the interruption of this baby in great pain, how am I to treat it holy? Sweet g isn't going to remember from the age of two that his mother sat by his bedside for hours constantly reheating his washcloth. This moment doesn't seem like it is for him, or his spiritual need. 

This moment, if treated as holy, has no other option than to be for me. For my depth, my maturity, my growth in compassion. Often I fail all these chances to grow and I get angry and frustrated and just scream, "I just wanna sleep!! Why do you hate me???"

My sweet boy has no plot or plan to ruin my night. They want to sleep just as much as me!  But my words grow sharp and do not bring comfort... or even show compassion for his pain. 

Amy Carmichael's words play over and over in my head... "see in it a chance to die."  To die to my flesh in order to give life to another.  This holy moment makes me more like the One who chose to die for me.  

Father, let me see these moments as a way to grow in depth and love for you. So that my sons will see Christ in me, the Hope of Glory.


*Written in 2017

Confessions of a Homeschool Mom

I don't know how to do it all.

I don't have enough patience.

I don't have a lot of money.

I don't have a lot of time.

I don't feel like doing bookwork.

I am so bad at math.



A few months ago when I titled this post I wrote the whole thing in my head.  But never had time to sit down at the computer to type it all out.  Why do the best and most honest words come when I can't sit down to write.  I know this is a season, but I am tired.  I don't want to be doing algebra for the next 10+ years.  And yes, I know I have done this to myself and I can change it at any time.  Except I didn't.... and I can't.... it is a calling.  Sometimes it is a calling I wish I didn't have.  Ten years of schooling seem like a long time to me.  I know some veterans are mocking me right now... "try 20?" If I am ever that mom, stab me in the eye with my red correcting pen.  I don't want to be the mom who marginalizes other moms for the experiences they have.  We grow into what we have.  No one can handle my situration like I can.  No one can handle your situation like you can.  Every person at some point experences hard times, they are hard because we have never had them before and unil we go through them we will never be able to handle them.  Next time it may be easier.  I know I am still ramping up in the intensity of my schooling years.  I am mentally trying to prepare for that.  This year was a game changer for us because we joined a co-op to help my highschooler with his subjects that I didn't have time to handle myself.  I guess we will never go back to having the pleasure of being home every day....

I  want to be honest.  I don't want to paint my life with rose colored glasses.  I have had some soul searching to do and make sure why I do what I do and why I have made the choices that I have.  I came to the point that I had to admit to myself that sometimes you know what you have to do and sometimes you really just don't like it.  But you do it anyway.  Seasons change so fast and I know that this will.  In the mean time, I am counting down to the next school break.

Dreams

March 26, 2017

I have dreams and desires deep in my heart. There are ways that I know God gives me, tiny ideas and ways to walk in them. But I seem not to believe in myself. And I don't believe that God will do anything with these things. The fear takes over. Whatever I do, I want to do it well. And because I don't believe that I will actually do it well and follow through I am too afraid to even begin. 

I promote others who really touch my heart with their message or products that I really love. But it is almost like I don't believe in myself to promote myself, in a way. Because I am afraid of people watching me fail, and even get joy from it. 

I feel like I am in the wrestle of Moses, when God told him that He was going to use him. But Moses had so many excuses to why it didn't work. My struggle is not outwardly voicing these things, but an inward struggle with fear of failure. I believe this season of my life God is breaking me of insecurity. That I am who He made me to be and even if He is the only one to see these things that I am obedient in, it is enough. In the secret, with Him. 

Can I do anything right??

Have you ever felt like you can't do anything right? I have. The expectations of hard to please people in my life or my own unmet expectations on how to run my home or homeschool my guys.  Feelings of  constant failure are such a heavy weight to carry. 

I am five chapters into handwriting the book of Leviticus and I am overwhelmed by the amount of law that God gave to Moses and the Children of Israel.  There are even detailed laws and sacrifices required for unknown and unintentional sins.  The only hope found is in the repeated phrase "he will be forgiven".... if all the requirements of the sacrifice are met.  There is a sense of constantly looking for what you have done wrong so that a sacrifice can be made to atone for that sin. 

I wonder how Moses felt as he was writing these laws and then delivering them to the Children of Israel.  Did he feel a heavy weight or hopelessness knowing that they would never be able to keep all these laws?  What was his delivery like? Was it gracious or was it harsh?  It brings to mind how I tend to deliver difficult news to my children.  I try to encourage them to try and do their best.  That failure is ok.  My recent phrase is "You have to learn to fail well, because we all do."  But this still seems hard for me to wrap my mind around.  I imagine Moses saying, "Here are the rules that you will never be able to follow, but you have to do it or God will be angry with you.  But He always will be, because you will never be able to fulfill it all. Have fun with that!"  I imagine Moses feeling the weight of it.  The Law it weighty, God meant it to be.

God had a purpose and a plan in all our failing and in His constant forgiveness.  All these laws were with a specific purpose in mind. God had a plan.  All of our striving leads to  nowhere.  At last,  God steps in with the solution.  Jesus. The weight of the law is still there, but He carries it. I will no longer buckle at the pressure because I am found in Him.   All laws are fulfilled in Him.  My striving has to cease.  And when I pick it back up again, it makes the cross seem worthless.  Obedience out of striving is worthless legalism.  Obedience from the heart gives life.  I want to see these laws with joy in my heart.  That while God required me to fulfill them, He also made a way for me to be able to live in that fulfillment, because of Christ.

Father, let me walk not in the hopelessness of laws and sacrifices, but let me walk in the freedom of your Holy Spirit where obedience from the heart gives me life abundantly in you alone.

Show Me Your Glory!

"Please show me your glory." The words straight from Moses after a pivotal event in the life of the children of Israel.  While he was on the mountain of God for 40 days, receiving the commandments and laws that the LORD was laying out for His children, the children of Israel grew impatient and wanted a god they could see.  Aaron put up no fight and went right to work. 

Out of that came anger, grief, intercession, repentance.  Then God commands that they should move, but He would not join them. 

Moses pleads with God, "If you don't come with us, please don't make us go." God,  I don't want to go where you are not! Don't make me leave you! The people were even grieved that their God, who they betrayed, would not go with them. 

I love how Moses is always into reminding God what He had said... as if He had forgotten His own words.  The thought that comes to mind is that God hides Himself to be found.  He wants me to search Him.  God had not forgotten what He had said... maybe it was to see if Moses would remember and hold God at His word. 

God was moved by the requests of Moses and relented.  He reassured Moses that he had favor in His sight and "changed His mind". But did God change His mind? Just in every grace story, maybe Plan B was Plan A all along. His desire was for Moses to seek Him and ask the hard thing. 

Moses asks to see God's glory but God's response was not a yes or a no... He told Moses that He would let His goodness pass before him  and proclaim before Moses His name "The LORD".  God went on to describe a place where He would put Moses, on a rock and there would be a place for God to cover Moses and hide him from His own glory, because no man can see God and live. 

As I was reading this portion, the words goodness and hide in the cleft of the rock stuck in my mind.  How can I see God's goodness when I can't see Him? When I am stuck and hidden and covered from the most intense part, the part that could result in death.... seeing His own face.  If I can't see God until He is moving away, how can I see His glory and goodness in my life?

During the most intense parts of my life, there is a closeness to God. I can't see Him, though His presence is the strongest I have experienced.  During the times where I have faced death, literally, I have felt hidden and protected.  And I may not see the goodness in those times, but as He begins to uncover me and I begin to see His back as He moves away, I see His goodness and I know Him as "The LORD" Jehovah God.  Sovereign and in control of all.  The God who doesn't need me... yet He wants me.

He covered me in the most intense times in His goodness.  He covered me so that He could be close, so close.  And I know He is there but as He uncovers my eyes, I see Him.  I see His hand over every part of that situation or circumstance.  This is His grace to me.  His glorious goodness. 
Exodus 33

Dream in the Secret

Dreams and Secrets.  Scary or brave, fear or excitement.  I'm not sure what I am feeling about either quite yet.  They are my words for 2017.  I don't think I have every had two words before, and I'm not quite sure how it happened.  But I can't unstick them, they are already deep in my heart. 

2016 ended pretty low, as I shared in the last post.  But as I began to pray about the word I would trust God to lead me through this year I kept feeling dream.  Would I dare to dream again?

I used to dream, but as reality, kids, daily meals, all the mundane swept in I have let the dreaming go. I have turned into not really being a dreamer, and any time I would normally hear the word or see it, skepticism would creep up in me, honestly.  I had to identify that feeling that would rise up inside right away as the word dream kept coming back to my mind.  I am very rational and logical.  A realist.  If there isn't enough money, it isn't possible.  If someone says no, I so ok.  I don't really push back.  I felt like if I claimed the word dream, that I could be made fun of and fail.  That it wouldn't really work out and that I shouldn't try anything crazy that I would dream for.  So many dreams have failed and I'm tired of failing.  But God hasn't let me let it go.

So as I have begun asking God to write His dreams on my heart, secret kept also coming to my mind.  For a couple of weeks I was wrestling, which word? Dream or secret? I've finally given up.  So this year, two words it is.  Dream and Secret. 

The feeling that I have looking into the unknown is that if I am in the secret, with my Father, He will make known to me the dreams that He has for me.  And just as in the past, He doesn't show me before hand.  He lets me watch it all unfold.  His perfect plan in perfect timing. 

What is in the secret will be made public.  So here I go, to dream in the secret until....

~2016~ A Year of Peace

In December 2015 I was praying about the word that I would focus on for 2016 and I felt the Holy Spirit keep leading me to peace.  I knew many changes were coming and I was afraid. I knew in my heart that it was not going to be a peaceful year.  It would be exciting, challenging and terrifying, as many ways we stepped out into the unknown.

God had called us out on the water.  I held onto hope that I was wrong about peace. I hoped that it might just become peaceful and easy... but I felt deep that it would be a year of finding peace in the storm.

As we transitioned out of some things and into others there were moments of peace, because we knew that God had called us,  there was no other option but to be ok with it.  God stilled the storm to a little wind at times and we were able to catch our breath for moments.  There were times of panic attacks not seeing how it would possibly work.  There were many moments of deep realization about what I really believed about God and how He cares for me.  It was deep soul searching and left scars. Praying desperate prayers of miracles, but they were never answered.

For about the second half of the year, I have been in Exodus in my scripture writing.  I stopped for a while, because I felt like Moses at times when God called him to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, but as he obeyed, everything got so much harder.  Then he would run back to God to double check he was hearing God right.  I couldn't handle it so I took a break, but everywhere I turned, God brought that story back out.

Going through the plagues and seeing God do amazing miracles and also seeing God plan to harden Pharaoh's heart, made me search my heart to see where I have hardened my heart to God.  I could see that I wanted my way and I wasn't surrounding to the process of the wait.  Waiting on God to provide, to lead, to open doors, to move mountains.

As the year ended, I have been searching my heart again, to find the things that God has done in my heart in this wait.  Trying to come to terms with Him not doing what I expected Him to do.  We walked into this year expecting God to do miracles and move mountains, because we knew it could only be Him.

But He didn't.

In the dark, one morning as I was confessing and asking God why He took us this way.  He brought to my memory how He lead the Israelites the long way around so that their faith would be strengthened and they would grow into what they were to possess and not run back in fear when they saw all they would face.

 He also reminded me of their shoes.

God didn't part any Red Seas for us... but our shoes never wore out.

Because of the logistics of our family and how we have lived this year, there is no possible way we should have done all that we did, gone everywhere we went, or even still be in our house.

But our shoes never wore out.

We were looking for huge things, but while we were looking those huge things we didn't notice the small things.  He got us through every single month.  He provided.  Our children barely noticed the difference.

Peace.  There was no earthly peace.  But Jesus... He was there the whole time.  Never to leave or forsake.  The depth of Peace was impossible to understand. Learning again how to live in His peace through the circumstances of this life. He became my Peace, more than I have ever experienced before, as a mother to 7. He gently leads those with young.

I picture myself sitting with him in the bottom of the boat, storm raging all around.  But I was with Him and He was with me, and the fellowship was sweet.